NATO – An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

In the past dozen years, the armed forces of NATO countries, whether operating
under the NATO banner or in related ad-hoc coalitions, have killed many hundreds
of thousands of people. Of those hundreds of thousands of people, only a few
hundred at most ever had any connection to any attack on a NATO country.

Whatever modern NATO has become, a defensive alliance it is not; that fact
is beyond rational dispute.

It is also the case that the situation in countries where NATO has been most
active in killing people, including Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, has
deteriorated. It has deteriorated politically, economically, militarily and
socially. The notion that NATO member states could bomb the world into good
was only ever believed by crazed and fanatical people like Tony Blair and Jim
Murphy of the Henry Jackson Society. It really should not have needed empirical
investigation to prove it was wrong, but it has been tried, and has been proved
wrong.

The NATO states as a group have also embarked on remarkably similar reductions
in the civil liberties of their own populations during this period. NATO to
me is symbolized by the fact that its Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen,
as Danish Prime Minister blatantly lied to the Danish parliament about Iraqi
Weapons of Mass Destruction. When Major Frank Grevil released material that
proved Rasmussen was lying, it was Grevil who was jailed for three years. In
the United States, no CIA operative has been prosecuted for their widespread
campaign of torture, but John Kiriakou is in jail for revealing it.

NATO’s attempt to be global arbiter and enforcer has been disastrous at all
levels. Its plan to redeem itself by bombing the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria
is a further sign of madness. Except of course that it will guarantee some blowback
against Western targets, and that will “justify” further bombings, and yet more
profit for the arms manufacturers. On that level, it is very clever and cynical.
NATO provides power to the elite and money to the wealthy.

But what of Putin’s Russia, I hear you say? I am no fan of Putin – I think
he is a nasty, dangerous little dictator. But little is the operative word.

Russia is not a great power. Its GDP is 10% of the GDP of the EU. Its economy
is the same size as Italy’s. The capabilities of Russia’s armed forces are massively
exaggerated by the security industry, including the security services, and by
arms manufacturers. The entire area of Eastern Ukraine which Russia is disputing
has a GDP smaller than the city of Dundee.

Russia is only any kind of “military threat” because of its nuclear arsenal.
The way forward to peace is active international nuclear disarmament – and the
existence of NATO is the greatest obstacle to that. The idea that almost the
entire developed world needs to encircle and contain Russia with massive military
threat, is as sensible as the idea that it needs to encircle the UK or France
– both of which have substantially larger and more diversified economies than
Russia and much larger and more technologically advanced arms industries.

NATO is by far the largest danger to world peace. It should be dissolved as
a matter of urgency.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster, human rights activist, and former
diplomat. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October
2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. The article is
reprinted with permission from his
website.